"Canonical has today publicly confirmed that they are working on a new cross-platform displayer server for Ubuntu. Called 'Mir', the X Window Server replacement is tasked with 'enabling development of the next generation Unity'. Which, in yet another about-turn, is to be rebuilt in Qt/QML." It'll be used for all Ubuntu variants (phone, tablet, desktop), and the first version will be released come May.

WinRT has far reaching implications. Beyond Windows 8, beyond Metro, and changes the game for Windows.

It now has a first class, native, ABI safe, object oriented API. That's incredibly powerful.

They can describe APIs as Async operations with continuations and using stuff like generics and exceptions. Compare that to the mess that was classic COM.

Agree with you there, and I think it is a welcome improvement. But if they can't manage to build a desktop environment around it that doesn't suck ass, it's going to flop, just like WPF and Silverlight, albeit for different reasons.

Personally, I hope they continue to improve it and make Metro in Windows 9 something that is actually usable. Whoever it was that decided that right mouse button menus were no longer relevant, and that horizontal scrolling was a good idea on the desktop should be summarily executed. And I don't mean that figuratively either In fact, we should put them into a lion's den, alongside the asshole at MS who invented the F-lock key, and then charge for admission.

Agree with you there, and I think it is a welcome improvement. But if they can't manage to build a desktop environment around it that doesn't suck ass, it's going to flop, just like WPF and Silverlight, albeit for different reasons.

I don't think they're going to build a Desktop environment as we know it. Period. I just can't see them going back at this point.

I do think that Metro Style apps will become a lot more powerful. The XAML stack will become more feature filled and support more scenarios.

They'll presumably show a lot of love to Mouse+Keyboard users. They don't really need to do much to dramatically improve the experience.

What they need more than anything is a standardized generic gesture driver for laptop touchpads. Every new Laptop with Windows 8 I saw did swiping gestures on the touchpad differently.

It ranged from completely terrible to mildly amateur. Its a nightmare. This needs addressing.

Personally, I hope they continue to improve it and make Metro in Windows 9 something that is actually usable.

Well just look at the growth from WP7.0 to WP7.5 to WP8. Its night and day. With some time behind it, Microsoft will mature the platform to be very powerful.

Whoever it was that decided that right mouse button menus were no longer relevant, and that horizontal scrolling was a good idea on the desktop should be summarily executed.

Right Mouse buttons have never been particularly discoverable, in my own analytics, people that use my apps and don't use tablets have a hard time discovering the App Bar (opened by a right click).

I've always seen the context menu used as a dumping ground for options which is annoying. There's a better way in Metro.

But Metro allows you to write Context Menus pretty easily using Popups (which is how they were made under the hood in WPF/SL. In fact, you can easily port the WP7 ContextMenu from the SL Toolkit if you want, there's a better one in Callisto a WinRT Toolkit).

I just don't think context menu's fit into Metro. A combination of app bars, content as chrome, and flyout menus can address all of the context menu scenarios.

The focus on horizontal scrolling is an artifact of their stupid obsession with 16:9 aspect ratios. I hate it. It makes portrait views on tablets useless. My Surface feels like a skateboard in portrait mode.

Right Mouse buttons have never been particularly discoverable, in my own analytics

This is a typical response from developers. They look at various statistics and decide 'well, since 90% of people aren't using this, we might as well take it out', thereby alienating the other 10%.

Personally, I think there's a way to please both camps with the same product, but nobody seems to even be making an attempt these days. Even Google is dumbing down Android, claiming that things such as SD cards are too complicated, and so they just rip it out.

This is what I like to refer to as the war on power users. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though, since it seems that any minority group in this world are the ones that get shit on and ignored.